


What happened to Nicky?

by pastelchalks



Category: Nicky Ricky Dicky & Dawn (TV), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Dimension Travel, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Medical Inaccuracies, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 20:57:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18269219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelchalks/pseuds/pastelchalks
Summary: Number Five finds himself in a bed that isn't his own, with a set of foreign siblings. He plays along with it until he figures out a way to return home to his own universe.--Nicky's been awfully quiet, and he's changed dramatically. The Harper's worry about their youngest son.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask man cause I don't even know.
> 
> also let it be known that I've seen a total of five episodes from Nicky Ricky Dicky and Dawn.
> 
> inspired by a meme I saw.
> 
> I might update again.

At first, it’s the silence. Sure, Nicky’s not the loudest Harper Quad, but he’s never silent. Nobody says anything because, hey, maybe he’s got nothing to say. Then it’s the odd request. Dicky, Ricky and Dawn are all betrayed but don’t know when to confront him. He wants his own room, and they thought they had hashed out this nonsense years ago, that they had all agreed that sharing the same room was better for all of them.

 

Nicky’s more silent than they’d ever heard him before, and Anne doesn’t know what to do with him. The behaviour of their youngest child was concerning. It’s about eleven at night when Tom decides to go for a glass of water, hopping out of bed into the corridor, only to find that some light peers in from under the door of Nicky’s new room. It’s a good two hours after their bedtime, so Tom goes to check in on him, find out what’s wrong.

 

He finds the room exactly how they’d left it for Nicky to decorate, plain and bare of any colour. He hadn’t even opened his box of belongings that lay on the floor. Nicky himself is propped up on a chair writing some variation of equations on the wall in black charcoal.

 

“Nicky,” Tom’s voice wavers, tired. “What are you doing? You have school tomorrow.” Except that Tom knows that Nicky doesn’t. While the others are going to catch the bus to school tomorrow, Anne and Tom have booked him a session with a locally renowned child psychologist. Their insurance covered the first six sessions, but if he needed any more than that the money would have to come out of their own pocket. Hopefully whatever was bothering Nicky would be resolved rather quickly.

 

“Dolores always said the equations were off,” Nicky responds, barely acknowledging the fact that Tom had told him he had school the next day. He licks a finger and rubs off one of the integers in his equation, correcting it.

 

“Will you _please_ go to bed?” Tom sighs, it’s too late for this. Nicky turns around and gives him a cold stare. He tucks himself to bed and glares while Tom kisses his forehead. Tom’s resigned when he notices it. Nicky’s mood hadn’t been pleasant lately, and nobody’s sure what to do. Dicky, Ricky and Dawn have commented that his behaviour at school had changed too. He’d become a much more quiet student, and didn’t sit near his siblings anymore.

 

When he showed up to school, that was. They’d gotten calls home from the school saying that he hadn’t shown up that day, and the school demanded that his absence be explained. Turns out, Nicky had been skipping. Nobody knows how he’d done it, Dawn swears that they all get on the bus together, but when they look around for Nicky after all of them had found a seat with their respective friends, he was gone.

 

Looking at the equations littered on all four walls, Tom has an inkling of where his youngest might have been while he’d been skipping school. They’d tried dropping the kids off to school personally, watching as each one of them enter the school gates, only to get another call from the school thirty minutes later, _“Mr Harper, Nicky is not in class, again.”_ and honestly? He’d gotten tired of it.

 

The next day, when Tom goes to wake up Nicky, sure enough, he was in bed like he asked the previous night. At least he’d gotten some sleep. He tries calling out Nicky’s name a few times, to no avail. He tries something else.

 

“Nicky, if you’re not up by the time I count to five - ” That had gotten him up rather quickly. None of them are sure what to think as they watch Nicky silently go through the motions. They don’t say anything when he pours himself a cup of coffee. There’s no milk, cream or sugar in it. Dawn giggles to herself, probably bracing for the inevitable ‘ _coffee is disgusting!’_ once Nicky tries a sip.

 

He doesn’t. In fact, his expression is one of contempt as he drinks the darkest coffee Tom’s ever seen somebody have. The rest of the quads sigh in disappointment and don’t even attempt to include him in during their breakfast chatter. Nicky opens up the green lunchbox Anne had provided for him for the day and recoils in disgust as he picks up the cheese sandwich from inside. He goes to make his own, a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich and places it in a sandwich bag before replacing the cheese sandwich.

 

Dicky gags from the table but doesn’t say anything.

 

The three quads leave to walk to the bus stop and Nicky’s about to follow before he’s stopped by Anne. Both Tom and Anne have taken a day off for this morning appointment. Followed by their morning appointment is also a doctor’s appointment for Nicky, just in case there’s any correlation. The last time they’d gone to see the doctor for a checkup for Nicky was a good eight months ago.

 

Both Anne and Tom sit in with the psychologist for the first ten minutes of Nicky’s first session, before they are asked to wait outside in the waiting room. They do, patiently. The session goes ten minutes over schedule, and the psychologist recommends that they book another session as soon as possible, and instead of her, she recommends them to another specialist. A child psychiatrist. When asked why she gives the worried parents a warm smile.

 

“A psychiatrist can prescribe medication. A psychologist like I am simply isn’t equipped to be looking at the more… serious cases, like it potentially is with your son. From what I’ve heard speaking to him, I’m thinking schizophrenia.”

 

Anna and Tom are horrified, but they agree in concern of their own son. Nicky the other hand glares steely down at his shoes, muttering angrily through a red lollipop he’d been given. They usher him back to the car in silence, half trying to make out what Nicky could be saying and half avoiding whatever had just taken place.

 

The trip to the doctor’s had been almost as concerning as the trip to the psychologist. One of the first things the doctor had done was put Nicky on a scale to weigh him. The doctor had scrunched her eyebrows up in concern.

 

“That’s odd.” She squints at the computer monitor. “It says here, last time he came in Nicky was forty-two point five kilograms. He’s now thirty-six point one.” The eyes of the two elder Harper’s in the room widen. “He’s lost weight and is about six and a half kilograms underweight.” The doctor proceeds to pull up a new diet plan for Nicky to help him get back in the healthy weight range for his age and tells them to check back in for another checkup in about four weeks.

 

She also tells them to go to the pathologist next door for a blood test, just to take cautionary tests in case the weight loss is due to some kind of cancer. Anne and Tom pray that it’s not the case. Nicky refuses to let the blood be taken from his left arm, refusing to pull up his sleeve, and makes the pathologist take it from his right arm, regardless of which arm was his dominant one.

 

That night, Anne prepares Nicky’s supper from his new dietary plan to gain weight, a large portion of potato salad, which she leaves in his room for him to eat. She won’t pressure him into coming down to face them all.

 

All at once when she sets down the rest of the family’s dinner, the rest of her children ask what’s wrong with Nicky. Anne’s silence allows Tom to fill them in, a bit too much in her own opinion.

 

“The psychologist thinks it’s schizophrenia, so we’re taking him to a psychiatrist. He’s lost weight and the doctor told us to test him for cancer. Nicky’s on a special new diet to help him gain weight.”

 

The three kids at the table have alarmed expressions on their faces, and Dawn looks like she’s about to cry. Anne shoots a sharp look at Tom. Ah, of course. Grampa Harper’s death from bowel cancer was three years ago, but probably still fresh on the minds of the quad’s, who had only been ten years old at the time.

 

Their brother had definitely had some kind of personality change so drastic that it gave them mental whiplash, but they’d still be devastated if he had ended up with some kind of cancer. At around seven that night, they go to the local school hall for the optional scholarship eligibility test. They had gone every year in an attempt in getting in the children to the local private school. Ricky had almost gotten in once but was just a few points shy, places were limited though, and he hadn’t made the final cut.

 

Even though they know that it’s more than likely that none of them are going to make the cut each year, they try, for any miracle. Each year, they jokingly claim that ‘ _this year is gonna be it!_ ’, but this year only three of them joke that. Nicky just looks mildly annoyed that he’s being pulled away from the equations he’s been erratically writing at.

 

This year, the test is multiple choice and online, rather than on paper, so that the results can be evaluated immediately by a computer. If they passed that stage with promising results, then they’d go through a paper test that wasn’t multiple choice, so that the education committee could be certain that it wasn’t a fluke. They’re allowed to choose two categories of scholarship that they want to apply for.

 

Nicky chooses Science and Maths instead of English and History like he did last year. Ricky reckons that Nicky’s going to absolutely flunk the test since everybody in the Harper family knew that science and math were Ricky’s thing.

 

Except, he doesn’t flunk it. He gets perfect scores, and when the instructor comes around with a paper test, he gets perfect scores in that too. Ricky’s still on the online test when Nicky finishes the paper segment, and both his parents go ahead with Nicky to talk to the instructor. Apparently, they’re one of the best scores they’d have handed in for the past six years, and in record timing, too.

 

Ricky gets oddly jealous when he finds the harsh 70% flash across the screen of the computer he’s using when he finishes the online test. To be fair, the test is brutal, asking them to recall integers on things that they couldn’t possibly be knowing. When the other two, Dawn and Dicky, finish their online test, they find out that Nicky’s the only one that had been given any sort of scholarship.

 

He also gets to pick between the two options of which one he actually wants to attend with.

 

“I thought you were the smart one,” Dicky informs him when they're on their way back to the car.

 

“I am!” Ricky insists, because if he’s not the smart one out of the four, then who is he? He’s always prided himself on being the only intelligent, the only _normal_ one out of them, so why could Nicky possibly surpass him in intellect.

 

Nicky’s the safe and innocent one, the _quiet_ one.

 

He wishes for the old Nicky back, not too sure he likes the new Nicky.

 

* * *

 

As it turns, Nicky doesn’t go to school the next day either. His parents have another appointment booked for him and explain the latest development to the new psychiatrist.

 

“Maybe he was skipping school because it was too easy for him.” The young, male psychiatrist muses, before pulling little Nicky into his office with him. “We’ll be about an hour.”

 

While he’s in that office, Anne’s phone rings. It’s the pathologist. Heart racing, Anne picks up the phone, only to be informed that, no, Nicky didn’t have any kind of cancer and as far as they could tell, he _should_ be healthy. An hour later, like clockwork, out comes Nicky and the psychiatrist, who writes out a prescription for him.

 

He asks to speak to Nicky’s parents in private, and Nicky’s left in the waiting room with another godforsaken lollipop in his mouth.

 

“I believe that we’re looking at schizoaffective disorder. Symptoms can include delusions, depressive episodes and social isolation. These are all symptoms I’ve observed and you’ve discussed with me over the phone. I’ve prescribed him some fluoxetine. Monitor the intake. One pill, daily.”

 

Anne looks at her husband for any sort of comfort.

 

“He believes he’s a fifty-eight-year-old man named ‘Five.’ trapped in a thirteen-year-olds' body. I believe referring to him as such might ease him into the reality of the situation.”

 

“He could have chosen the name ‘Five’ to distance himself from his former position as ‘Nicky’, and has expressed such resentment to the name with me. In numerology, five is a number that means balance and is the most dynamic single digit number. It could also be Nicky distancing him from the fact that he’s apart of a group of four siblings.”

 

The psychiatrist hands them the green prescription paper and the billing information about their session. Tom just puts down their insurance card.

 

“So what do we do?” Anne asks, worried. This is far bigger than they could’ve imagined.

 

“Refer to him as ‘Five' and treat him how you would and adult for the most part until he ultimately breaks out of his own delusion. Make sure to monitor him carefully, as suicidal tendencies may also be common in young adults with his condition.”

 

They go to the drugstore, buy the fluoxetine, and return home.

 

Five hums in content as he’s returned to his comforting wall of equations.

 

* * *

 

“Mom!” Her eldest yells when they come back from school.

 

“Yes?” Anne replies from her place at the till of their sporting equipment store.

 

“Where’s Nicky?” Dawn questions her, rocking back on forth on the heels of her shoes.

 

“At home with your father, why?” Anne’s fixing up one of the menus on the till screen.

 

“Dad just called asking if he was here because he’s not at home.” Dread fills Anne’s stomach, she’s reminded of the psychiatrist's words just hours before. ‘ _suicidal tendencies_ ’ echo through her head.

 

“Get in the car, kids.” She instructs the rest of her family, panic makes her heart throb and her diaphragm moves on its own accord. She can barely breathe. They race home and Anne parks her car in the driveway. She tells her kids to split up and look for Nicky in any possible spot they could think of. It’s two minutes later when she hears a loud, choked cry from Ricky.

 

“Mo-Mom.” Ricky hiccups from the garage. “I found him.”

 

When Anne sees her youngest son’s lithe form in the bloodied puddle on the floor, she calls the ambulance.

 

There’s a visible slice vertically going up his right forearm, and Nicky’s fingers are bloodied. There’s also what looks like a gunshot graze on the side of his leg. He’s unconscious and still breathing, but the blood is still pulsating from both wounds.

 

That night, the dinner is silent between them, but it’s in the hospital cafeteria instead of home.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Link to the meme this entire fic was inspired by: https://www.instagram.com/p/BuSB9cnh08J/
> 
>  
> 
> AND HOLY HECK I DIDNT EXPECT PEOPLE TO REVIEW THIS GARBAGE AND ACTUALLY BOOKMARK IT
> 
>  
> 
> you guys are amazing, i truly appreciate you reading my trash fic

 

They all happen to be in the room when Nicky comes back from his unconscious state, and seeing him tug at the soft restraints violently breaks Anne’s heart. She can’t stand to see one of her babies in such a position. Nicky looks at them, betrayed.

 

“What’s this?!” He refers down to the padded cuffs around his wrists that secure firmly to the bed in the hospital. His three siblings have been filled in on the situation, and are surprisingly gentle with him.

 

“They’re to stop you hurting yourself again,” Dawn tells him, not allowing the grief in her head make it to her voice.

 

“Hurt myself?!” Nicky says, upset. “I didn’t hurt myself!” He tugs even harder on the restraints keeping him down and is extremely displeased when he finds that he can’t sit up either, as his chest has also been restrained down.

 

“How do you explain the large cut in your arm, then?!” Ricky can’t help himself but be angry, his brother’s just become so difficult to deal with and tries for his brother’s sake to tone it down.

 

“You were found holding the knife,” Anne confirms, not maintaining eye contact between her and Nicky. She allows one of her hands to be taken in Tom’s own, her body almost sagging from the comfort. Nicky once again goes silent, something the Harper family had grown used to from their youngest over recent times. Ricky huffs, and runs out the room, calling out over his shoulder.

 

“I can’t believe you, Nicky.” Dawn stands awkwardly, shifting her weight from leg to leg, and offers to go find Ricky. Dicky goes after them to help, not being able to stand the sight of his once cheerful brother a far cry from his regular self. Now that Anne sees what’s become of her family, no amount of blinking can keep back her tears. She doesn’t want Nicky to see her like this, so she steps out for a moment. She needs to be strong for Nicky.

 

In the hallway Anne berates herself for being so selfish, her son probably needs her in moments like this, and Tom follows her into the hallway and hugs her from behind. She shouldn’t be stealing moments for herself, not when Nicky’s in his current condition. When they go back into Nicky’s room, he’s gone.

 

Somehow he’s managed to get out of the restraints and out of the room. His shoes are gone, and so is his phone. Nothing indicates any sign of him leaving, even the window’s locked, which could only be locked from the inside, so he can’t of gone out that way. Not that it would matter, they’re on the third floor, and the outdoor fire escape is a good few metres out of reach for somebody of Nicky’s size. Anne swears on her life that she didn’t hear the door to his room open once they left.

 

They call in the doctors, who tell a few guards to be on the lookout for a thirteen-year-old kid in a hospital gown. With the guards and other nurses notified, they’re assured that Nicky can’t have gone far - not in a hospital full of people on the lookout for him. Visiting hours are almost over, and they’re asked to go home.

 

Once they’re home, they hear snoring through the door to Nicky’s room, and once they peep in, they see him, collapsed on the floor in his hospital gown. Tom sighs and picks him up bridal style, tucking him into his actual bed, and Anne resigned goes downstairs to call up the hospital. He’s fine, just tired and probably a little sore. The doctor replies that he _guesses_ Nicky should be fine to go home, but if the bullet graze or the cut on his wrist gives him any trouble, that he should return immediately. The doctor hangs up after telling them how to redress the wound each day, with instructions on where to get the gauze.

 

There’s something odd about when Tom tucks Nicky into bed, as on the bed sits the upper half of a grey mannequin, free of any hair. He moves the mannequin onto the floor, which emits a low animalistic like growl from Nicky. With caution, he puts the mannequin back onto the bed, moving it over slightly so that Nicky would still be able to fit next to it.

 

That night before bed both the elder Harpers have their head in their hands and take in a deep sigh.

 

“I don’t know,” Anne admits from her side of the bed.

 

“Hm?” questions Tom, whose heart aches deeply for his son.

 

“I don’t know what we’re going to do. I just want the old Nicky back - not whoever this ‘Five’ is.” She’s too exhausted to cry right now, and she knows that if she wasn’t so tired, the tears would be coming out.

 

“He’s still our Nicky, honey. He’s just… going through a few changes and we’ll have to learn how to deal with them. He’ll be alright.” Tom tries, although if he’s being honest with himself he doesn’t know any of it for sure. He’s been doing some research ever since this had started, and he knows that if Nicky really does believe to be a 58-year-old stuck in a young body, then there’s no amount of convincing that can get him to think otherwise.

 

He supposes that it will be frustrating, but as a family, they’ll pull through, they always do. They’ll be able to deal with whatever Nicky’s condition throws at them. Tom can tell that Anne doesn’t entirely believe him when she just breathes out through her nose loudly once before turning out the light.

 

* * *

 

The plan was to just drop Nicky off at the psychiatrist and come back around when it was time to pick him up again, except when they sign him in for his session, the elderly lady at the counter takes one scan with their insurance card and looks at the screen of her computer a little too long before handing back the card. She motions Anne to wait a few moments, then passes her a few pamphlets. They’re all colourful but the lettering that catches her eyes are in a bright, bolded purple. ‘ _America’s #1 inpatient mental facility for adolescents’_

 

“The doctor would like me to discuss a few… long term treatment arrangements for your son.” Anne flips through a few of the pamphlets and reads some of the recommended programs for adolescents. A few options are circled, presumably, by the doctor, that suggest he should be in the one month program. It’s scheduled to begin during the first month of the summer holidays, which begins in about a week.

 

It’s a bit out of their way in terms of distance, being an entire forty-five minutes away from home. Visiting hours are on the weekends from nine to five. After that, they hope he’s sanctioned to return back home into a normal family setting. They eventually decide on one with, an adolescent facility called Pearl Heights. It’s advertised as a place for healing, with a large variety of positive reviews. It’s a bit out of their price range and not covered by their insurance, but they figure they can manage to fish the money out from somewhere, after all, it’s for the wellbeing of their son.

 

They book the times in and wait for their son to leave the room with the psychiatrist.

 

Twenty minutes later, he does, and with him, he holds another prescription. It’s an antipsychotic that doesn’t have any set dosage - just one pill in the morning with his breakfast if he’s feeling restless or violent. Nicky’s smile is tight as he passes the prescription towards his mother, who is bracing for the price tag that would come with it.

 

It’s not too much for them, but it certainly means that the kids will be getting fewer toys and things that they want for Christmas. Ricky wouldn’t be able to get that new 200$ calculator he’s been wanting, and Dicky’s going to have to skip on the copious amounts of hair-gel he uses each and every morning.

 

* * *

 

Five’s no idiot. He already has plans on swapping out the new pills in the jar with paracetamol. He won’t allow himself to be sedated so easily, and besides one paracetamol tablet would be harmless enough compared to the new sedative he’s been given. His plan has almost been working exactly like he anticipated. The moment he woke up in a bunk surrounded by three other thirteen-year-olds that insist on calling him ‘Nicky’, he’d formulated his plan.

 

Since Five wouldn’t know how to act as he had never met his counterpart, so he figured if he just acted, for the most part, as he would normally, and tell the complete truth to the psychologists and psychiatrists, then he’d be able to get out of their inevitable suspicion by claiming mental instability.

 

All in all, a relatively easy plan for him.

 

His first psychologist session was extremely easy to play at.

 

“ _Hello Nicky, what brings you here?_ ” Dr Ivanov had greeted him, to which he met her with an indignant stare.

 

“ _Who’s Nicky_?” Five had looked around for any other person she could have been referring to.

 

“ _You are._ ”

 

“ _No,_ ” he had insisted. “ _My name is Number Five_.”

 

“ _Well then,_ ” Hook, line and sinker. The psychologist was beginning to play into his delusions. “ _Tell me about yourself, Number Five_.”

 

“ _I was born 12pm on October 1st, 1989. I’m 58 years old._ ”

 

And that was how it had all started, he’d just explained how he had time travelled into the year 2019 to stop the apocalypse, and had failed, so as a last resort he tried to transport him and his six siblings back in time. The equations in that last attempt must have failed… and to be honest with himself she probably would be targeted by the commission if they knew that she had been given information about him.

 

“ _So what causes the apocalypse?_ ” She had asked, after a moment of her scribbling down notes.

 

“ _My sister_.” Five confessed. He was determined to stop the apocalypse this time around.

 

* * *

 

His parents pack his bags for him, probably because they don’t trust him to not bring in dangerous weapons, and Five could live with that, their intuition was good if that was the case. The downside to him being checked into the inpatient program is that he’s not allowed any kind of technology. He’s just going to have to make do with the integers he’s memorised, and hope that he doesn’t need to incorporate the theory of proton decay _because he just can’t remember the exact pro-numerals and it’s killing him_.

 

The room that he’s booked into isn’t even his own room, it's just a large room separated into eight smaller ones by those soft blue hospital curtains. In each division, there’s a bed, a side table that’s three drawers tall, and a chair. Even though he’s first out of the eight patients to have arrived he doesn’t even get to choose which room he’d prefer, and instead gets assigned the one furthest from the door and flush against a real wall. It’s by a window so he supposes he lives just fine with that.

 

Even though the windows do have bars on them, he reckons he’ll be able to warp through them just fine.

 

Five tugs against the plastic wristband that binds around his right arm, but only manages to succeed in irritating the skin around it. It reads ‘Harper, Nicholas’ and in brackets is the name ‘Nicky’. It’s in all capital letters and followed by a serial of numbers, then a black and white barcode.

 

He swears the wristband is tougher than those ones you got at carnivals, being almost impossible to remove without a sharp blade. He tries to ignore the wristband but can’t get his mind off the scratchiness of it all, is this how Klaus feels every time he goes to rehab? Five digs through the bag his parents had packed and finds his journal that he had planted in the bag himself, except he’s got no pen or pencil to write with.

 

Five supposes he should have expected it since he could most likely make a weapon out of almost anything, and sharp-pointed objects were some of the obvious go-to items for makeshift weapons. A few more people are checked into the rooms next to Five, and one of them has the brilliant idea of introducing himself to Five.

 

They tear open the curtain and Five can only look on dumbfounded at the familiar face.

 

“Klaus?!”

  

Of course, he'd find Klaus here of all places.


	3. Chapter 3

Klaus’ eyes widen as he stumbles closer to Five, and he sags in relief when his hand actually makes physical contact with Five’s shoulder. It’s unmistakably Klaus, although he looks exactly like he did when he was thirteen. Huh, he guesses that makes the two of them.

 

“Oh thank god, it’s not just me.” Five can appreciate the sentiment, but wonders how exactly Klaus is here with him. He catches sight of Klaus’ wrist band. Although the white band of plastic isn’t out of lace upon Klaus’ hand, the name that rests upon it is. Archibald, Daniel. Five stifles a laugh, not ever being able to see Klaus as a Daniel of all things.

 

Lucky for Five, Klaus begins to explain himself.

 

“You will not believe what happened. I woke up in a family who thinks I’m their kid, with an Umbrella Academy uniform of all things.” Klaus lets out a humourless laugh of his own. “And guess what! We live next door to a god damn funeral home. You can’t blame me, a poor thirteen-year-old (apparently) for losing his shit when he can see ghosts. They thought I went ‘round the bend, and admitted me here.”

 

He then trains his eyes on Five.

 

“Whatever you did at the Icarus theatre, you fucked up something.”

 

Five agrees wholeheartedly with that statement, and he opens his notebook showing his work in fixing up his equations. Klaus can barely tell what it is but gives him a thumbs up anyway. The rest of the rooms are filled up with other people, ranging from the age of ten all the way to nineteen. None of them they can recognise.

 

That rest of that day goes on smoothly, and when they get served dinner in the communal hall, everybody gets the same, except for Five, who gets almost twice the portion of the rest of them. It’s all finger foods, so none of them gets any utensils to eat with. The cups are those paper ones that get soggy if you drink from the same spot twice.

 

Everybody gets their pills for the night, Klaus takes his own without complaint, but Five? He hides the two pills in the space on either side of his mouth between his upper teeth and cheeks. It doesn’t fool the nurse, and he’s forced to actually swallow them for real. It was worth a try because when he’s escorted, a mere ten minutes later, into the shower he takes an index finger and shoves it down his throat, forcing himself to expel the pills.

 

He can’t let his guard down.

 

He can’t.

 

Before they’re about to turn in for the night, a few nurses grab five by the shoulders and held him down against his bed, and Five allows it to happen. He’s confused, and won’t fight back until he knows what they’re doing and why.

 

“We need you to tell us how you got shot, Five.” Ah, so this was what it was about. This timeline’s version of the commission had caught wind of Five accidentally jumping timelines and had tried to eliminate him from the timeline, to which Five had responded by removing the secondary tracker that he had though long deactivated and sent the six men home in body bags.

 

“It’s a criminal case - you clearly got shot and your parents are working closely with the police to bring the person responsible to justice.” It was only a matter of time before the commission would find him again, they’d probably send more temporal assassins after him.

 

It wouldn’t be too hard to find him here, cornered in an adolescent mental facility. So he tells them the truth.

 

“The commission sent a locally hired group after me.” The nurses holding him down sigh in disappointment. Apparently, they can’t use that.

 

“Where did it happen?” They finally ask, not even being bothered with knowing what the commission was or who the men were. Five lists off the location from the top of his head, it’s an old mining warehouse that he had warped to when he was looking for some supplies. The warehouse did not, in fact, have the supplies in question, but it was the place where the commission had ended up finding him.

 

Another nurse to the side writes down the address to give to the police for investigation. At least it was a real address that they could use in the police report. The nurses that have the tight hold on him let go roughly and restrain him to the bed with the same padded restraints before leaving. It’s lights out now, although, by the rhythm of Klaus’ breathing in the bed on the other side of the curtain that separates them, Five can tell he’s faking it, horribly.

 

Klaus eventually ends up falling asleep.

 

Five doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

When the nurses come in to wake them, Five’s already out of his restraints sitting on the bed waiting patiently while scribbling down complicated equations in his notebook that they couldn’t even hope to understand. The nurse in charge of him shakes her head flabbergasted. She’s quite young for a nurse, probably around twenty-four years old, and she eyes him warily.

 

“You know, those restraints are there to protect you.” She doesn’t ask how he managed to get out of them because she knows hat she won get anything out of him. There wasn’t even any security footage, patient confidentiality and all. “We don’t want you hurting yourself.”

 

He scoffs. If he ever wants to cut into his arm again, Five doubts anybody would be able to stop him.

 

They’re let into the bathroom for five minutes each to freshen up, and then they’re served breakfast. Most of the other patients are given a bowl of oatmeal but Klaus and Five are given what seems like a mockery of a full english breakfast. There’s two bits of toast that are soggy from the eggs placed on them, a pile of baked beans and a few sausages.

 

It’s a sad excuse of breakfast, and the other’s oatmeal wasn’t looking that much better either. He would definitely prefer oatmeal. Klaus can be seen scarfing down the entirety of his breakfast while Five simply grimaces. He begins to nibble around the toast and spoons the baked beans on.

 

Five leaves the rest but manages to finish the bitter orange juice.

 

Today’s supposed to be the first day of group therapy between them. All the patients are escorted to a communal room, with chairs in a circle formation, a nurse is already sat down on one of the various chairs with a clipboard and pen in hand. Near the door stands two of the biggest muscular men Five had ever seen, apart from Luther of course.

 

Everybody takes a seat, with Klaus to Five’s left. In a circle now, they begin going around briefly explaining what their situation is. Klaus begins casually.

 

“My name is Klaus. I see dead people.” A few other patients chuckle a little, and the youngest, a ten-year-old, looks disturbed if nothing else.

 

“What, like in the sixth sense?” A rude seventeen-year-old barks out. Klaus omits a slow nod, confirming as if the seventeen-year-old boy wouldn’t understand properly if he had gone any faster. An eleven-year-old girl named Lily furrows her eyebrows and narrows her gaze on Klaus’ wrist.

 

“Hey! It says right there that your name is Daniel.”

 

Klaus sniffs indignantly.

 

“Well, it’s wrong.”

 

Five almost groans when it gets to his turn. Does he really have to explain himself to these cretans? Some of these pathetic dimwits wouldn’t even be able to understand or grasp a single thing about him. Anyway, he’d do it, if only to get the nurse off his back.

 

“I’m Five.” He’s about to continue when the girl from earlier, Lily, interjects.

 

“I thought you were thirteen.” She’s not even mocking or anything, just purely confused.

 

“No, you dumbass, my name is Five. And I’m actually fifty-eight.” Five corrects her. The nurse scolds him for the use of profane language, and he can’t actually bring himself to care at all.

 

“Your name is Five but you’re actually named fifty-eight?” She’s even more confused than she was before, and Five doesn’t even know anymore. It’s ridiculous.

 

“No! My name is Five and I’m fifty-eight years old. Klaus is also my brother.”

 

He’s close to snapping, but thankfully the Nurse gives them the ‘okay’ to move on to the next person’s story.

 

Five actually does groan this time.

 

The sooner he returns to his equations the better.

 

* * *

 

When they stop for lunch, a policeman, Anne and Tom are escorted into the lunch room by a nurse. They wait for him expectantly at a table near the corner of the cafeteria, and Five refuses to come unless Klaus can listen in, as well.

 

Eventually, the policeman relents and allows Klaus, who is licking his ice lolly, to listen in on what they have to say. Anne smiles warmly at Klaus and Five. She hugs Five tightly, as if he were a lifeline, and breathes in the scent of his hair.

 

“Making friends, kiddo?” Anne asks, passing her eyes over Klaus quickly.

 

“No. He’s my brother.” Five firmly insists. Anne frowns but doesn’t say anything about it. Tom curiously looks over at Klaus, wondering why on earth Five would consider him to be a brother. The policeman awkwardly clears his throat.

 

“Um, Nicky, from the address you gave us last night, we checked it out and it seems like your story follows. There were six bodies there, all armed with various knives and guns.”

 

“This answers some things but raises even more questions. We’d like to know how it all went down and how you, a thirteen-year-old, managed to kill a calvary of professionals in self-defence.” Klaus humourlessly laughs at the policeman and chews on the leftover a stick that had come out the bottom of his ice lolly.

 

“Oh dear, I think you're underestimating little Five over here.” The policeman straightens up, looking over at Klaus.

 

“I’m sorry, and you are?” Klaus’ eyebrows frown but his mouth shows no emotion conveying the action at all.

 

“Klaus, or Number Four if you want to be fancy.” Five cringes when Klaus’ pop stick breaks and small bits of wood fill Klaus’ mouth. Klaus doesn’t seem to mind and just continues chewing the bits in his mouth.

 

“Why would you guys have numbers in place of names?” The nurse gives the policeman a look but doesn’t interrupt them.

 

Klaus shrugs. He didn’t really know why their dad had done anything.

 

“I guess dad never had any names lined up for us and boom, he just numbered us. Mom gave us names when we turned nine. Five didn’t want one.”

 

The attention refocuses back onto Five, who’s now annoyed by the sudden eyes on him. Five looks the policeman in the eye and gives them an overly detailed recount of what had happened at the warehouse. He can see Anne and Tom cringe every time he brings up a reference to another one of his kills, he gives extra care to describe how it smelt.

 

“So,” the police officer looks doubtful and raises his eyes when he goes over his notes that he had taken whilst talking to Five. “You’re an assassin who was actually born in the past but comes from the future and people have targeted you because you deflected from this timeline correcting agency.”

 

Five nods.

 

“More or less.”

 

The policeman sighs and refocuses on Five’s ‘parents’.

 

“We can’t use anything he’s just said as factual evidence or as even plausible. We’ll try to take it into consideration but given the... nature of your son's comment I doubt that anything will come of it.” Anne and Tom both nod, a little disappointed. They had at the very least expected their little Nicky to be making huge progress in overcoming his delusion, but all it seems is that this other kid, Klaus or whatever, had joined in on the story.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t understand! He seems to just be getting worse.” Anne’s close to mentally giving up on her son. She’s losing hope and these meetings with his therapist don’t seem to be helping her spirits very much. They’re meeting up with both Nicky’s original psychiatrist and the nurse in charge of his stay to discuss Nicky’s progress.

 

“He’s making connections and socialising. We can see that he’s made a good connection with another one of our patients his age, Daniel.” The nurse amends, bringing out Nicky’s Manila folder from her drawer.

 

“Although he denies Daniel is a friend and instead is his brother, we believe this could be Nicky’s way of recuperating with the absence of his usually ever so present siblings. The only siblings Nicky has ever known were the same age as him, so as soon as he learnt Daniel was also thirteen, he latched onto his presence. He’s allowing Daniel to act as a surrogate brother to him.”

 

The psychiatrist confirms that it’s perfectly normal and healthy for Nicky to Aquire his own surrogate sibling as a coping mechanism, it also brings up the clear conclusion of part of the current predicament. Nicky missed his siblings.

 

Of course! How could they not have seen it before?! The Harper quadruplets were as thick as thieves, and although Nicky had begun to distance himself, he had clearly missed his siblings enough that his brain had made up this wild story of being related to the closest person to him that was also his age to protect himself from the trauma of being alone.

 

Nicky and Daniel’s compatible delusions allowed them to sustain a semblance of a sibling relationship where none was actually present.

 

“One another note, he’s had a little clash with another patient that has since been removed from the program. Poor little Lily Evans believes she’s a witch. Nicky wasn’t very accomodating to her. Hopefully, they’ll be able to get along with our newest patient arriving Monday.”

 

* * *

 

They did get along with the newest charge.

 

A girl named Amanda Rose, who had suddenly become mute one day, refusing to communicate without the use of her own and pad of paper.

 

Who also happened to look like Allison when she was 13 years old.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT TOOK SO LONG CAUSE I WROTE THIS WHOLE THING ON MY PHONE CAUSE MY LAPTOP BROKE
> 
> IM FUCKING LIVID IT WAS SO HARD WTF
> 
> horrible grammar cause I couldn’t use a online grammar checker 
> 
> Also thanks, please leave a comment it makes my day.
> 
> This chapter was written on an iPhone 7 and ffs it was painful
> 
> I almost cried when writing this - not cause it’s sad or anything but because it physically strained my thumbs.
> 
> Help me out by pointing out mistakes


	4. Chapter 4

The rest of the group therapy sessions are optional and voluntary. Either they go if they’re up to it or they don’t go at all. This had resulted in a total of three people attending these sessions, and unsurprisingly Allison had gone to each and every session. As expected she was only there in physical presence and had managed to get away without saying a word in all sixteen sessions she had attended. The group therapy was a sham and had gotten all adolescents involved nowhere.

 

It was silently agreed as a waste of time, but those who did continue to attend only did so out of boredom.

 

There wasn’t a lot to do around Pearl Heights unless you fancied taking a stroll into their library room filled with such content that everything that might even mention violence, death or even adventure at all had been carefully filtered out. In doing so, only the dullest books remained.

 

Five hadn’t gotten around to asking why, but Klaus did. The nurse on duty simply tutted like they were all stupid little pets.

 

“There’s a time and a place for confronting ourselves, Danny.” Klaus pinched his lips into a tight grimace and gave her the semblance of agreement.

 

“Of course, Nurse Judith.” Klaus drags out the tense in the last vowel of her name, drawling. Five couldn’t tell if the drawl was added emphasis or if they really did drug Klaus up that much.

 

It was absolutely insulting.

 

Other than the voluntary group sessions, there are compulsory private one-on-one therapy sessions four times a week for each patient. Usually, the sessions include detailed anecdotes from Five’s childhood about his father’s unnecessarily brutal training sessions and the therapist furiously taking notes on everything he had said. Questions and answers are exchanged between both therapist and patient. Five doesn’t think much of them, other than the fact they are an almost daily annoyance to him.

 

It’s inconvenient but he’ll sit through them if that means he can get straight back to his equation corrections after. As each day passes there are more and more factors to be included. The unknown variables are what scare him the most, so he tries to figure everything around in his head, and almost wants to strangle the person that interrupts him, causing him to lose one of the integers in his mind.

 

It’s a different nurse on duty, that informs Five that it is in fact time to turn in for the night. Once Five is strapped into his bed with the soft, cushioned restraints, the nurse drags in an intravenous stand, and hooks up a bag of clear, light blue liquid, inserting the needle attached to the small tube into Five’s right forearm. He goes towards the small machine attached to the stand’s pole and manually enters in a number, controlling the flow of the drug entering Five’s body.

 

Five, already strapped into his bed, couldn’t do anything to object it. It was most likely non-lethal, and Five supposes it wouldn’t hurt too much to just have clouded senses for a few hours. The hospital staff had probably noticed the fact that he was always up so early, and had thought that he wasn’t sleeping well. They probably got in this drug to aid him to fall asleep. There’s a dull ache around his right forearm, and Five just assumes that it’s just his body getting used to the flow of another liquid entering his bloodstream, but the ache dissipates within minutes.

 

He can feel his eyes getting heavier, and his limbs slumping at his sides. For what feels like about an hour later, Five’s barely awake to notice another nurse has now entered the room and had taken the railing of the bottom end of his bed in their hands, and the nurse that had injected the drug holds the other end of his bed in one arm and in the other arm holds the IV drip stand.

 

They roll his bed out of the large room with minimal difficulty, guiding the bed into the hallway just outside another room. It’s a padded room with what seems like pillows cushioning everything, including the floor. The bed just seems to be a few layers of mattresses stacked on top of one another. The nurse that was at the foot of Five’s bed carries Five to the new bed and straps him in again with the restraints.

 

The older nurse notice’s that Five’s still awake and curses.

 

He dials in a higher dosage of the drug.

 

After that, Five knows next to nothing in the endless bliss of unconsciousness.

 

* * *

 

When Five awakens, he panics when he finds it’s near impossible for him to force his eyes open. He doesn’t remember a lot, but he can remember awakening a few times last night, only for a panicked nurse to up the dosages on the IV drip. He remembers a lot of weight on his chest at some point. He remembers there being a burning sensation somewhere, and he can remember being uncomfortably sweaty.

 

Most importantly of all, he can remember gagging a lot at some point.

 

There was a pain, then there was yelling.

  
And finally, there had been silence.

 

He stops fighting his eyelids to open, and once again falls victim to unconsciousness.

 

* * *

 

When he comes around to consciousness, this time he can properly process his surroundings, and his eyes finally let themselves be of some use. He’s in a normal hospital ward now, and for once _he’s not at Pearl Heights_. In two chairs sit both of his parents. Anne’s eyes are puffy and it looks like she’s been crying for hours all the while being severely sleep-deprived. Both his parents are in their pyjama’s.

 

“Sorry son, we came as soon as they called. To be fair, it was three am.”

 

Five’s brows furrow in confusion. What could they _possibly_ be talking about? “How do you feel?” Tom asks him, and Five answers in complete honesty.

 

“Like shit.”

 

Anne barks out an ugly humourless laugh and Tom shoots her a dirty look. Five sighs and goes more into detail.

 

“My jaw is sore, and so is my stomach. My head is pounding and my whole body aches in general.” Both his parent's nod, a policeman knocks on the door and politely requests to speak to his parents alone. They agree, and they talk outside for a few moments, before coming back inside Five’s hospital room.

 

“If he doesn’t remember, we’re not telling him.” Tom looks like he’s about to object but ends up dejectedly sighing in agreement with Anne.

 

“Honey, what’s the last you remember?”

 

Five consider her words.

 

“Being put under some sort of drug. According to the colour and effect, I’m guessing it was morphine.” He lies. What he actually last remembers isn’t enough to make any assumptions off of. It’s not even a proper memory, it was more of a recollection of a feeling he experienced. He remembers feeling disgusting all over.

 

Five shivers even just thinking about the sensations it had given him.

 

* * *

 

They take him home the following afternoon.

 

“What about Pearl Heights?” Five had ended up inquiring. Anne gives Tom a knowing look.

 

“We decided you might be more comfortable in your own home after what had happened. We had you discharged early.”

 

Five shrugs, dumps his bags by the front door and raced upstairs into the comfort of his own room. On his bed sits Delores, well it’s not _his_ Delores, but it's  _a_ Delores. Although they hadn’t been through the same things together, Five still finds that he can comfortably talk to Delores without a filter. He can freely express all his emotions to Delores with minimal judgement.

 

Though she’s always been pessimistic towards Five’s alcoholism, Five can confirm that in no way did he stop drinking because she had asked. He’s only stopped due to the difficulty it would be to find a good bottle of whisky as a thirteen-year-old in this reality. Upon closer inspection, his room had been almost completely harm proofed. They’d taken his stash of various knives and sharp objects that he had kept in the bottom of a box under his bed.

 

They removed the lock from his door and had made sure that his sheets were tailored in such a way that it still gave his body enough coverage as a blanket but wasn’t long enough to make a noose out of.

 

Out of annoyance, Five begins to hit his head against the oak wood desk rhythmically. He’s six hits in when his mother bursts through his bedroom door and announces that he’s not to be completely alone for an extended period of time. She checks his head for injury, pulling the classic ‘how many fingers am I holding up?’

 

She drags Five down into the family room to where Ricky Dicky and Dawn are already engaged in a game of Uno. They deal him in seven cards and continue playing. Five can’t ever recall a time where he’s ever actually played a game of Uno with anybody, ever. There hadn’t been time for games in the Hargreaves household, even the occasional hide and seek was rare. Hide and seek was only reluctantly allowed in their household as it could aid in the development of their stealth skills.

 

As it turns, Five doesn’t need to know how to play, as all players are too enamoured in eavesdropping on the shouting match taking place upstairs in their parent's bedroom.

 

“We are not sending him to another facility,” Anne seethes, “Not after what happened last time!”

 

An uneasy tension filled the entire household as Tom argues back.

 

“Nicky needs a team of specialists equipped to handle him!” Something can be heard thrown against a wall.

 

“Are you saying that we can’t handle him?!”

 

“What I’m saying is that we’re clearly not helping his situation and he needs to be sent to people who can.”

 

“What he needs is his parents!”

 

“Clearly not! If that was the case then explain why he seems so hell-bent on avoiding us all?”

 

A door slams somewhere in the house and the quads think it best to let their parents cool off for a while.

 

* * *

 

The next morning the Harper parents have clearly come to a decision and both monitor Five like hawks. He’s never allowed a proper moment to himself anymore. Even when he’s trying to fall asleep in his room, his parents seem insistent on sitting in the chair by his bed until his breathing evens out.

 

The Harper’s always seem to only sleep after they’re sure Five’s asleep, and wake up before Five does. Every waking moment Five’s never alone anymore. It makes him snappier than he’s ever been. In the first few days, they politely request that Five doesn’t take more than four minutes in the shower, just so they can make sure that they know what he’s doing at all times.

 

“Good news,” Tom begins at breakfast one Thursday morning.

 

“Oh, worm?” Dawn answers, raising an eyebrow while serving herself another slice of toast. Tom ignores her use of the word ‘worm’ and instead gets directly to the point he was trying to bring up.

 

“I got an email,” He looks Anne in the eyes. “Nicky, here, has been referred to The Haleness Institute. They’re offering a very _specialised_ program that caters in cases like Nicky’s. I heard two other patients that also went to Pearl Heights have also been referred to The Haleness Institute.” As he’s explaining, it’s beginning to feel more like he’s trying to convince Anne. “It would be extremely good for Nicky to attend. He’s already aquatinted with two other patients. This will get him to _open up_.”

 

Anne puts down her fork and sighs.

 

“I don’t know, Tom, it really just feels like we’re shipping him off because we’re not adult enough to parent him-“

 

“We are _not_ sending him off because we’re bad parents. We’re getting him help because we’re _good_ parents.” Tom interrupts Anne with his own take.

 

“I’ll go.” Five interjects from the hallway, a glass of orange juice in hand. He downs the rest of the glass quickly.

 

“I guess that settles it then.” Tom muses. “The program begins one week from tomorrow.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please reveiw - im very attention starved
> 
> it makes my day
> 
> also happy to annoucne that this chapter was written ON a computer. 
> 
> please point out mistakes - i dont have a beta and English is not my native tongue,


	5. Chapter 5

“Honey, before you start treatment at, I’d like to see you in this shirt.” Anne holds up a short sleeved button down. It’s a clear ploy to see Five’s forearms, he’s been oddly suspicious in only wearing long sleeve shirts. Tom had immediately dismissed the very idea that he could be hiding anything. ‘ _He’s just self-conscious of that knife wound_ ’ Tom had excused.

 

“You won’t like what you see.” Five insists, carefully even in his voice. But he rolls up both sleeves anyway, to reveal smooth skin, free of scars except for the long knife wound from long ago. _‘It was just a tracker,_ ’ he had admitted to cutting in his skin, also managing to mangle a few tendons in his arms when he dug around his flesh with his other hand. That’s the scar they had been expecting, but this? They hadn’t expected this _at all_. A circular tattoo centred around a simple umbrella insignia.

 

There’s a beat of silence.

 

“What the fuck, Nicky?” Anne curses and Five can’t say he’s ever heard her swear. “A fucking tattoo? Are you serious?!” Her jaw slackens. There's no doubt that she's mentally trying to figure out how much it would cost to get a tattoo removal, without questions asked, for a thirteen-year-old kid. “Go to your room and start packing!” Five gladly takes the window of opportunity to escape them, into the comforting sight of equations littered on the walls. Once again yelling rings out through the thin hallways of their home, and this time Five doesn’t bother to pay attention, because it seems no matter what they say, he’s heard it all before.

 

He’s horrified to find that the time he’s been preoccupied with his parents taking him on excursions to various different shops in the morning that the walls of his room had been completely painted over.

 

That was months of work in equations - gone. The excursions that morning had been a sham. At least he still had a journal full of notes, but only God knows how many corrections of integers he had made on the wall. That had been _important_ work. He packs into a bag most of what he thinks he’ll need, not bothering to include his journal.

 

He supposes, what harm could one fucking month without equations do? He’s already been set back weeks by the removal of his the ones on his wall.

 

The drive up to the Haleness Institute is long and silent, as many things are these days. Upon arrival, Five finds out that it looks less of a hospital and more of a deserted Victorian manor surrounded by large green fields of grass. The foyer is like a small sitting room, with a young man typing away on a laptop. When the man notices them, he grabs a bundle of lanyards and gives one to Five.  
  
On the end of the lanyard is a card with Nicky’s most recent passport photo, a line of code letters that read “NHARPER140204” and the name ‘Five Hargreaves’ printed in bold.

 

“This is your key to the manor, Five. Every door has a chip reader in it, and authorised areas will let you through, and unauthorised areas will discreetly decline you access.” The man explains. “If you’d enter through the door to your left you’ll find yourself in the common room. A few patients have already made their arrival. You can acquaint yourself with them. You might recognise one of the others that have already arrived.” Five nods in acknowledgement and enters said door with his things.

 

The common rooms look like another place that seems to be taken right out of the 1800s with extravagantly old furniture that Five’s not unused to seeing in his old home at The Umbrella Academy. Seated in the room already are four people, two of whom are engaging in conversation. The two others are quietly keeping to themselves, one of which Five recognises. Lily Evans.

 

“You.” She points out, narrowing her eyes.

 

“Me.” Five affirms.

 

“It seems we all have something in common. We’re taken from our own realities and put into this one. In smaller bodies.”

 

So it would seem that they at least agree on _something_. She’d already deduced their situation, so at least she wasn’t stupid. Maybe she had spoken with the others and it wasn’t _just_ Klaus, Allison and him in this situation. Maybe it wasn’t mental illness for the other patients with similar symptoms, maybe _they_ too had been ripped out of their respective universe. Five was sure hegot the equations right  _but they just weren't right enough_.

 

“Your proof?”

 

She rolls her eyes.

 

“If I really was delusional, then how would I be able to do this?” Lily pulls out a stick around the length of her forearm and waves it. To the surprise of absolutely everybody in the room she manages to make a book levitate six feet above their heads. She motions to the two scrawny boys sitting side opposite of each other on armchairs by a chess table. “And despite apparently never being to Europe in my life I’ve got an English accent.”

 

Five nods, now with these foreign factors to include, the situation was getting worse by the second. Sure, inter-dimensional travel was difficult, even for himself to somehow have managed, but somehow according to the current situation, he had managed to create a spatial anomaly across various _different_ timelines, pulling in random people from different realities into this one.

 

But what made this reality so important that it had become a focal point between the rest of their realities?

 

A few more patients begin to arrive, and among them are Klaus and Allison, who is still mute for some reason. When Klaus spots Five, he practically sprints across the large room to wrap his arms around him.

 

“Five! Buddy, we were so worried when we were told that you had been checked out early. Two of the older nurses were arrested around the same time. I’m so glad that you also have been referred here!” Klaus continues to invade Five’s personal space by patting him down, frowning when he finds he can feel the outline of Five’s ribs through his shirt. He’s about to ask Five if he eats enough but instead tells him about Allison.

 

“Originally she hadn’t been referred here, but once she opened up to her therapist more her name was on the list! She was the last enrolment, only put on the list yesterday afternoon, actually.” It’s around then that Klaus realises the extended company in the room.

 

“ _Hello_ , I’m Klaus and that’s Allison.”

 

The two others that had just arrived also introduce themselves to the rest of the room.

 

“Evie.” The brunette girl introduces herself as when prompted for a name. The lanky boy with unkempt hair also says his own name, not offering up much else.

 

“Han.” He offers up, not really paying attention. He rolls his eyes once he gets a good look at the room.

 

Everybody talks among themselves apart from a select few that choose to sit in solitary. There are no new arrivals and the sitting room has more than enough space to accommodate all nine of them. A stern looking woman in her late thirties enters the room and directs them to place their things in their new dormitories. The dormitories are first categorised by gender then sub categorised by age.

 

There’s three to a room, so there’s one dormitory for the three girls and two dormitories for the six boys. Each room has three canopy beds and alarge window in between each bed. At the end of the bed is a trunk. Klaus and Five end up in the same dormitory accommodated by another boy who looks to be around a year or so younger than them. He doesn’t say anything and silently packs his belongings into the trunk at the end of his bed.

 

Five doesn’t seem bothered with unpacking any of his things and just slides his suitcase under his bed. Klaus, however, _does_ throw all his belongings in his trunk but ends up doing so in an unorganised fashion. What the two Hargreaves notice about the boy is that he happens to be in possession of a few different guns. Now Klaus has never been one into guns, but from what he can tell the boy is in possession of what looks to be a few repeating rifles.

 

Although the sight of them doesn’t make Five uneasy, Klaus for a fact _knows_ that he can’t stop a bullet should a gun be aimed at him.

 

Klaus isn’t known to be a snitch but that doesn’t stop him from immediately telling the woman from before about the guns.

 

She. Just. Laughs. At. Him.

 

“Honey, as a citizen of the United States of America, he has the right to bear arms, but due to safety reasons and the nature of this institute, we’ve confiscated all ammunition with a thorough check through his belongings.”

 

Klaus isn’t satisfied but takes the explanation from her anyways, surely the kid would be able to _hide_ ammunition on him somewhere? In his underwear compartment maybe? Klaus now had a good idea of who he wasn’t going to cross in the near future.

 

Once the sun sets at around eight o’clock dinner is served. There’s no menu or any specified serving time, just a buffet of food placed in front of them in the centre of a large extravagant table. Nobody seems to notice Five’s minuscule portion that he serves himself. Klaus and Five’s mysterious roommate seems to be inseparable from a boy from the other dormitory, an older boy around fifteen years old. After Dinner is when most of the socialising begin in the common room.

 

Most of them figure that they’re in the same boat as each other, pulled from their own time into a younger body and a different reality. Everybody’s elated to find that they’re not alone in their situation, and a few of them excitedly announce that they suspect they might be from the same reality of time as somebody else.

 

Five’s trying to find some correlation between everybody’s lives to see what made them similar.

 

“What do you all last remember before arriving here?”

 

The answer is instant.

 

“Dying.” They all say in unison.

 

At that point in time is when the stern woman returns to the room and announces curfew. They’re all demanded to return to their assigned dorm rooms. Five finds out he’s not the only one savvy to scribbling things down in a journal.

 

“I don’t get it. How was everybody else dying when they arrived here except for me, you and Allison?” Klaus muses out loud to Five. Five shrugs.

 

“You guys did die, but I used my power to revert you to your thirteen-year-old body, which is very alive.” Silence once again blankets the room, and they eventually close their windows down to a position where it’s one-third open, to let in the cool summer breeze. The kid (who occupies the bed to the left of the room that’s flush against the wall) ties back the curtains that are closest to his bed.

 

He seemingly, with no shame, just changes into his pyjamas. They're a weird kind of red onsie that they hadn't seen before, and looked to be made of a scratchy cotton. 

 

“What’s your name?” Klaus musters up the confidence to ask the so far dubbed ‘Kid-with-guns’.

 

“Huh?” The kid finally notices. Klaus repeats his question and the kid digests it.

 

“I’m John. John Marston.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pleas reveiw.
> 
> also point out my mistakes because i am humble and will change them if pointed out.
> 
> english is too hard for me.
> 
> would y'all kill me if i wrote the next chapter in german -
> 
> jk jk
> 
> Also a pat on the back to anybody who figures out who the other kids are before I mention them in the next chapter
> 
> the thlot pickens


End file.
